Goals 2000 Loses Its Way on Standards

Gayle P. Frame has a simple message for her fellow curriculum
directors in northeastern Wisconsin, and the federal government is
paying her to deliver it.

Writing academic standards and revising classroom teaching will be a
long, hard job, she tells the 70 or so people gathered in the Holiday
Inn ballroom here.

Similar messages about refocusing academics and teaching in the
nation's schools were supposed to be spreading throughout the country
as a result of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. But the rules
governing the program enacted by Congress in 1994 have grown so loose
that sustained discussions of standards--like the one Ms. Frame led
here last month--are rare.

Goals 2000 has lost its original focus on standards bit by bit since
President Clinton first proposed the plan in the early days of his
presidency. Fears that the program would lead to federal control over
local curriculum decisions has driven Congress, governors, and school
administrators to move Goals 2000 away from its standards emphasis
toward a loosely affiliated series of projects and computer
purchases.

Only occasionally, like here in this region of Wisconsin, is the
program getting a chance to make good on its potential to foster
locally crafted classroom reforms.

"There are a number of states where the money may be put to good
general use, but it's not being spent on thoughtful and integrated
reform," U.S. Undersecretary of Education Marshall S. Smith, one of the
program's architects, said.

For the current fiscal year, Congress earmarked $340 million for
participating states. Next year, the Goals 2000 total will rise to $476
million.

After states take up to 10 percent for their work and drafting new
standards, the money goes to districts, where the law envisioned that
local officials would use it to find ways of applying new standards in
their classrooms.

"I don't think any of us is going to pretend that this is going to
be less work," Ms. Frame, the curriculum director of the Howard-Suamico
school district near Green Bay, told colleagues from 10 Wisconsin
districts at the meeting here. "Hopefully, our districts can share with
you what we've learned and make it a shorter process for you."

Ms. Frame started leading the Howard-Suamico district toward
standards for academic content in 1992, just as the Bush administration
was launching projects to write national models for standards in key
subjects--definitions of concepts and activities students should
master. After more than four years, Howard-Suamico is just now nearing
the completion of the project.

Goals 2000 pays for 20 percent of Ms. Frame's salary this year so
she can dedicate one day a week to the project. She leads workshops
like this one and travels among the 24 districts that are represented
by the regional education agency to advise them on the importance of
stronger standards.

At the recent gathering of curriculum directors, principals,
teachers, and one school board member, Ms. Frame explained that
teachers who take on standards are in for radical changes. And
districts that adopt such reforms need strong and steadfast community
support.

Dodging Controversy

But such intensive requirements may steer people away from tackling
the kind of work Ms. Frame outlines, particularly in a program whose
federal funding lacks focus, observers say.

"The uses of funds have become much looser," said John F. Jennings,
who helped craft the Goals 2000 law as a House Democratic aide and is
now the director of the Center on Education Policy, a nonprofit
Washington group tracking school reforms. He now compares the program
to a block grant--money from Washington that states and local schools
can spend however they please.

"As the bill went through, anything that gave an inference of
federal control was eliminated," he said.

In California, for example, the Republican governor and the state
schools superintendent battled over whether to accept the federal
money. In the end, most of the money went to state's reading
initiative.

"The money was plugged into priorities that the governor already had
in reading or whatever the school district came up with," said Michael
W. Kirst, professor of education at Stanford University. "It's a series
of fragmented projects."

Backers of the nearly 3-year-old Goals 2000 program face the
frustrating fact that after surviving repeated political attacks, it
may have lost its soul.

Even in Wisconsin, a state deep into a debate over what school
standards it will adopt, most districts lag behind the commitment of
this northeastern area.

"There's so much more willingness to work on content standards
here," said Loren J. Raythert, who moved from near Madison to become an
assistant high school principal and the curriculum director of the
1,800-student New Holstein district.

Buying Time and Ideas

Here, the $403,600 grant under Goals 2000 to the Cooperative
Educational Service Agency No. 7 is driving a rethinking of the way
schools teach children. The 70-person, six-hour discussion in Manitowok
would almost certainly not have taken place without the grant, said
James S. Coles, the administrator of the service agency.

"It wouldn't be impossible," he said. "I wouldn't be too optimistic
that it would happen fast."

Federal money pays for the hotel ballroom, the pastries and coffee
that are waiting when the morning session begins, and the $5.75 lunch
buffet that every participant walks through at noon.

More importantly, the federal grant reimburses schools for the
substitutes needed to fill in for the 40 or so teachers who left their
classrooms for the day's workshop.

"Knowing that, I found a way for [teachers] to be here," said Jim
Burger, the curriculum director for the 2,200-student Two Rivers school
district. "It was important that these people have a common knowledge
base to start from."

Mr. Burger billed the Goals 2000 project $210 for three full-day and
one half-day substitutes to cover for the four teachers who heard Ms.
Frame and others who have been working on new standards for four
years.

"People were saying, 'One of the problems our district has is
finding time to do this,'" Mr. Coles said. "By helping with substitutes
and providing them with expertise, we're in effect buying some
time."

Most of the expertise in the project comes from Ms. Frame.

She has worked closely with several teachers from her district and
officials at the Mid-Continent Regional Education Laboratory.

The federally funded technical-assistance agency has helped Ms.
Frame and officials in the Green Bay and Ashwaubenon districts write
standards. Working together, the group has also prepared teachers to
modify their own work to reflect the standards. The federal Goals 2000
grant is paying for 40 percent of the $120,000 consulting contract the
coalition of Green Bay-area districts signed with the regional
lab.

Mixed Bag of Results

Across most of the country, however, new standards are a daunting
prospect. And with the country's insistence that the federal government
stay out of local curriculum decisions, the uneven results "may be the
best we could hope for," Mr. Jennings said.

From the beginning, Congress has been wary of requiring states to
adopt standards and mandating that school districts follow them. Over
the past two years, the Republican leaders of Congress have warned
against too much federal intrusion while trying to gut Mr. Clinton's
pet education program. Meanwhile, backers of the program have made
tradeoffs to keep it alive.

As a result, Goals 2000 is all about technology in states like
Alabama and Wyoming. In North Carolina, the program is seen as a
vehicle for training teachers how to use computers in their classrooms
and recruiting others to be mentors to their colleagues.

"Congress has gone out of its way to encourage states to spend their
Goals 2000 money on technology," Albert Shanker, the president of the
American Federation of Teachers, wrote in a recent paid advertisement.
"Why should states carry on with the tough and controversial job of
setting standards when they can substitute the easy one of buying
equipment? Why should politicians risk votes when they can get
applause?"

Because of the lax language on standards, the focus on standards in
the the program has been a "mixed bag," according to Jennifer Davis,
who coordinates Goals 2000 for the U.S. Department of Education.

"There are some areas that we wished the focus had been much more on
standards," Ms. Davis said. "At the same time, we have lots of examples
where states ... did a much tighter job of creating the linkage"
between school reform and high standards.

Cultivating Local Change

While other areas equivocate on standards, Ms. Frame and her
colleagues in northeast Wisconsin are some of Goals 2000's truest
devotees.

Ms. Frame says that the work toward defining what students should
know and then making sure that material is taught--and learned--in
classrooms has been worth the work.

Teachers are now questioning whether their usual approach to
teaching a common unit on ancient Egypt--one where students learn how
to write hieroglyphics, build model pyramids, and use
papier-mƒch‚ to turn their teacher into a mummy--is the best
idea.

While the unit is popular, Ms. Frame explains, it offers little
practice in writing, complex thinking, and other skills the
Howard-Suamico district now wants its students to learn. And it also
leaves students with false impressions of life in ancient cultures.

"The kids now think mummies were made of plaster of Paris," Ms.
Frame joked.

But convincing teachers that they need either to scrap or radically
alter such lesson plans is difficult, she said.

"Change is something that takes a long time," Ms. Frame said. "A
one-day workshop or reading a book is really just the start of a
process."

She and others say that here at least, federal money is paying for
better local work.

"It's important to involve teachers and involve communities," Mr.
Coles of the regional service agency said. "You can't have change from
the top down."